Friday, December 9, 2011

Clark Ashton Smith Fans: Which Cycle?

I am told that good things come to those that wait...or something and the other...really I am too restless and impatient to listen anymore to these kinds of homespun adages.

Though recently it did ring true. After a year of patient (and disciplined) bidding, I won a sweet and affordable lot of those Ballantine paperback collections of Clark Ashton Smith's work.

Though I had read several of the entries in the Hyperborean cycle (including my favorite, flawed CAS gem “The Seven Geases”) it was pleasure to get a chance to read them all in one sitting.

But even more than the stories; the introduction, hand-drawn map, and geographic walk-through by Lin Carter—really someone should have had a tough love intervention with that man to limit him to this kind of editorial core competency—really fired up my imagination.

I instantly wanted to plop that time-forgotten lost-isle straight down into the Hill Cantons. (Since I have had vague allusions to the lost Hyperborean civilization all along not a terrible stretch).

So here's my query of the week to you in the echo chamber: if you had to pick one of his story settings/cycles, which would you base a game setting on and why?

Zothique? Hyperborea? Averoigne? Xiccarph? Something else? (If you are going to cherry-pick from several, you better defend that position, pal.)

17 comments:

I think in the end, i would choose Averoigne.There exists a magazine devoted to CoC rpg (i can't recall the mane right now), where they are trying to "build" the Averoigne setting.

I defend my position stating that in Averoigne there is witchcraft and sorcery which are very dark in nature, a sense of doom, decadence, strangeness etc.. that makes it unparalleled.I think the only rulebook you could actually use nowadays to game in Averoigne would be "Cthulhu dark ages".

And, more importantly than anything else, whoever shows capable of writing an RPG based on Clark ashton smith's writing is going to be the new Gary Gygax of the future.period.

Averoigne is a strong contender, not withstanding the fact that the Castle Amber module was the very first time (really my only real window into his work until four years ago) that I had heard of him. (Plus you already have a nifty hex map and encounter guide thanks to the Moldvay treatment.)

I think it also has a greater tension by contrasting the real and familiar, historical France in the medieval era, with the dark fantasy edges.

Someday, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea might actually be released. I have a portal to Cykranosh in my current game that no one has yet taken (lucky for them!). I could never choose just one. They're all too much fun, including the space ones.

The CAS Thing I've been puttering with off and on is bits and pieces of Hyperborea and Zothique yoinked out, mixed well with a Dying Earth-type setting of my own concoction, which at some point hopefully will be served in convenient picaresque-sized cups.